Girls just wanna have fun …without getting raped

In case you aren’t tired of being called a slut yet, check out Concerned Women for America’s audio interview about girls gone wild on spring break. (Clearly, this is what the AMA warning hath wrought.)
Apparently somebody bought CWA’s Janice Crouse a copy of Female Chauvinist Pigs, because she repeats the book’s message nearly word-for-word: Young women are complicit in a culture that objectifies them.

What we find is the whole culture is really encouraging girls to be more wild. For instance, the Playboy is saying, you know, girls need to be more rebellious, a bit more out there in your face, a bit more like the guys. To be a prude or someone who is straight-laced is the worst thing you can do… So I think it’s high time the AMA and the government got into the business of warning young women, and saying to them this is not just something that’s dangerous to your health, it’s dangerous to your life.

Yes, clearly young women are to blame for their portrayal in “the Playboy.” Crouse then wades into unbelievablly offensive territory, suggesting that women who have been raped/murdered/kidnapped were asking for it because of they were out drinking and socializing.

We’re seeing disastrous results. Most of our listeners will recall Natalee Holloway, who was on vacation in Aruba… She disappeared there. A good time doesn’t mean going off with guys you don’t know, and going into situations where your life could be at risk. It’s a situation that no parent wants to go through.
Up in New York, we have a young girl, a graduate student who went to a bar, who stayed there until 4 in the morning, and paid with her life. We don’t know what happened to her, but we know that it was a gruesome murder and she went through horrible, horrible abuse before she died. So we need to give warnings to young girls today that some of the things that are being promoted by our culture are very disastrous.

WHAT? Natalee Hollway was asking for it because she did a few jello shots? Imette St. Guillen died because she was out at a bar on a weekend night?
This is the sort of offensive position that we’ve come to expect from groups like CWA. It gets problematic when supposedly reputable sources of information, like the AMA and the mainstream media, prop up their notions that young women are to blame for all violence inflicted on them.
Take, for example, the Boston Globe story “Fearless in the City,” which ran in the wake of St. Guillen’s murder.

Such carefree attitudes are more than the usual bravado of young adults, some sociologists say, and instead reflect false feelings of safety that are unique to the generation of women that grew up watching “Sex and the City,” chatting with strangers on the Internet, and relying on cellular telephones as lifelines…
For those women, popular culture has depicted strong, sexually independent women who negotiated an urban life that, while full of romantic intrigue, was presented as essentially safe, Levin and other specialists say.

No wonder CWA is loving this! They’ve been saying for years, without the help of the AMA and major newspapers, that women’s sexual independence is sure to bring the wrath of god.
Another example, from the NY Daily News:

St. Guillen loved going out, and her friends marveled at how much the 5-foot-2, 110-pound student could drink without losing her composure. “She could really put them down,” a former classmate at George Washington University said.

Then there’s Fox News, which loves to exhaustively dissect the unladylike behavior of murdered beautiful rich girls (excuse me, “coeds”)– and, in some cases, even blame the girls’ girlfriends.
Why’s it so hard to blame murderers and rapists for murders and rapes? We can all agree that getting very drunk and walking home alone isn’t safe behavior. But describing the girls’ other actions– like “kissing men they’d met just hours earlier” while still in the bar — makes it seem like those actions are causally connected to the violence they suffered.
And while I certainly agree that it’s troubling that some women aren’t thinking about their safety, most articles made no mention of ways that women can make themselves safer when they go out drinking. How about giving tips on how to stay safe, or talking up programs like NYC’s Right Rides?
As one reader responded to the Globe article:

Can we now expect an article about men who dare to wear Armani suits and Rolex watches being at fault if they’re robbed?

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